Author's note: This is a 'companion piece', which takes place during the epilogue of the Dragon Age: Origins walkthrough, Tainted. If the reader's up for it, they can follow the Warden Commander's path by reading that story (linked in the author's profile). Reviews are welcome!
The man lay quite still upon his bed, listening to the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears; he didn't know how they knew which room had been his, but he stared blankly up at the familiar grey ceiling, cold sweat chilling his neck from the nightmare which had woken him. "At least they didn't put me in the barracks," he mused, barking a laugh.
He'd woken with a scream dying on his lips and her blood-red eyes boring into him. With a silent, satisfied nod, she'd turned and stalked from the room, leaving him alone. In the hour since, he'd lamented his foolishness-the damned elf had given him an out, told him to go back to the Free Marches and forget the name his father had left him. She'd even given him the mementos he'd been after...but she made it clear that if he showed his face anywhere near the Vigil again, he'd leave it either as a Grey Warden or a corpse. It had taken him a little more than a day to decide, remembering all of the sneers which followed mention of his great-grandfather, Padric. That man had run off to join the Wardens, never to return to his young son, Tarleton Howe...who'd passed on resentment for the order to his own sons, Rendon Howe among them.
Nathaniel had largely been spared the details of that resentment, but his youth had still been coloured by the occasional whisper of Padric's folly. Fresh knowledge just how Grey Wardens were made suggested that the ancient Howe had not survived the process; certainly if Nathaniel had understood just what it meant to join the order, he'd have taken more than a day to think about it...and likely, he'd have come to a different conclusion. Yet now his veins carried darkspawn blood as well as his own, irremediably linking him to the fiends. He'd expected having to fight them, of course; that was the entire purpose of the Grey Wardens, after all. He'd even expected some kind of initiation rite, to prove his worthiness. But he hadn't anticipated taking part in a blood magic ritual which cursed him with horrible nightmares and a ravenous appetite and, likely, condemned his soul to the Void.
A sudden anger rose up within him, then, different from anything he'd felt before. Even news of his father's death hadn't brought him rage; an adolescence spent across the narrow sea had bred a healthy distance between father and son, and Rendon Howe's passing had conjured an abstract sort of grief. The loss of his family's lands and titles had given rise to indignation, even engendering the grudge which saw Nathaniel quit the Free Marches in a bid to make his father's murderers pay for their mistake. But that hatred burned itself out during the journey, snuffed by rumours learnt upon the road-that his father had butchered the Couslands and allowed slavers into Denerim's Alienage, amongst other crimes, which would have moved the hand of any just and righteous king. And if there was anything Nathaniel knew about the bastard on the throne, he knew that Alistair played at being both. No, this anger went deeper than a son's duty to avenge his father. Nathaniel felt it burning in his very blood, tinging his thoughts in deep shadows.
What kind of a world had the Maker wrought? Misery and death, with brief pleasures sought all too often at the expense of another's happiness. If the Chant of Light were true, then the darkspawn were agents of heaven, sent to cleanse the world of its wickedness...and what right did men have to contradict the Maker's will? Especially when those most opposed to divine judgment had to resort to evil magics in order to withstand it? Perhaps the world wasn't worth saving; perhaps a Thedas covered in sterile, darkspawn-corrupted earth was more pleasing to the Maker's sight than the festering illness of humanity. He'd seen enough of it in the Free Marches, and even in his own family; his father's actions were the symptoms of a diseased world, in need of the Maker's cleansing hands.
Or perhaps he was really just furious at himself, for being unable to see his own father's darkness in time to save the Couslands. He'd had a fondness for Teyrn Bryce's daughter, once, before his father sent him off to Tantervale for his education. At one point, Nathaniel had entertained notions of marrying the girl...but that was out of the question, now, even if she hadn't been murdered along with her parents and their retainers. He wondered if his blood hadn't always been tainted, by his own father's malice rather than by the Maker's scourge.
Motivated by this disquiet, and not a little bit of hunger, Nathaniel pulled himself from his old bed and slunk into the hallway he'd known so well as a child. The tapestries were virtually the same-a bit darkened with the years, of course, but they still depicted the pride and history of Amaranthine. He intended to seek solace in the kitchens-wondering, idly, if Cook Stephens still lived and worked within the Vigil-but his feet blithely carried him in the opposite direction from the stairs. Inevitably, his steps brought him to the very end of the hall, to the modest wooden door which concealed his father's bedchamber. Somehow he knew that she would be there, lording herself over his father's study. He tested the knob, unsurprised to find it locked; then he checked his pockets, and was indeed surprised to find his lockpicks hadn't been removed while he lay dreaming. The lock was the work of moments, since it was the very first one he'd ever learnt to open. The mixture of pride and rage on his father's face had been well-worth all the effort, not to mention the pain of the strapping he'd taken as punishment for the accomplishment.
The study was dark and abandoned, a single candlestub burning low on the desk. It took all of Nathaniel's concentration to feel around the room, his eyes unable to adjust properly to the flickering light. A smirk curled at the corner of his mouth when he remembered that elves supposedly had better vision-to her, the candle might seem a torch. As he approached the door to the bedchamber proper and found it ajar, he heard a soft panting from within, which gave him pause. Could she be sleeping, and suffering her own nightmares? Then he wondered why he was even here, in the antechamber to the bedroom she'd stolen; did he mean to kill her, after all? Or provoke her to kill him?
A louder cry broke through his reverie, and made his decision. If she'd woken him from the throes of his own nightmare, rather than letting the sheer horror of it rip him back to consciousness, he would've been grateful to her. Perhaps, if he did her that favour, she'd be grateful enough to help him sort through the questions and concerns his Joining had left unanswered. Thus, despite all of his skill at stealth and silence, Nathaniel simply pushed through the half-opened door, intent on waking the woman from afar-and stopped short at the scene before him, illuminated by the crackling fireplace. The woman lay utterly naked upon his father's bed, her knees bent and thighs splayed wide as her hips lifted from the duvet in a slow rhythm. Nathaniel's lips parted in a silent gasp, his eyes inexorably drawn to the glimmer of steel which slowly moved over the elf's nether lips as the woman hissed out a heated moan. Her voice modulated strangely, and he realized that she was speaking-no, chanting, in some strange language he'd never heard the like of before. Suddenly, the man couldn't turn away, his gaze following the tip of the dagger which glided across the furred mound at the confluence of her thighs.
The blade was already streaked with crimson, but Nathaniel witnessed the dagger's point slice deeply into both of the elf's outer labia, one after the other, each piercing accompanied by a shrill cry and an eager upwelling of fresh blood. The cadence of the elf's chant shortened and her writhes increased, her back bowing until the soles of her feet and her shoulders were all that made contact with the bed beneath her. Half-horrified and half-enthralled, he saw that the fresh blood did not drip down onto the duvet as he'd expected; rather, each drop which fell from her flesh dispersed into a fine mist which came to hang about the woman. Her hips rolled, and Nathaniel found his heart thudding in time with the tempo of their thrusts, his trousers growing uncomfortably tight with the vision of her sex glistening in the firelight. Suddenly the chanting reached a feverish crescendo and she moved the dagger between her thighs, carefully lining the bloodied tip with her entrance. His throat constricted when she brought the blade forward, bucking her hips to meet the thrust half-way, her strange words melting into a guttural scream. The elf's free hand tore at her hair as she collapsed onto the bed, but her right arm seemed to have a mind of its own, and it pressed until the dagger's hilt met the resistance of her torn lips. The blood flowed freely from her core, spreading out over her skin and floating in great strands about her, as though they were iron filings and she a powerful lodestone.
Her scream renewed itself twice more, while her whole body tensed; Nathaniel felt an odd tugging in his veins, as though his very blood wanted to escape through his skin. When the elf removed the dagger from her centre and the crimson haze began retracting into her core, the sensation in his own flesh became nearly unbearable. Gasping, he grabbed for the doorway. "Andraste's blood!"
Immediately, the writhing in his veins ceased, and what blood remained upon the elf's body finally found weight again, streaking down her flesh to soak into the thirsty blankets beneath her. "Not Andraste's," the elf panted, after a moment. A chill swept along his spine as he met her crimson eyes and saw amusement in them. "Mine."
A shadow of the madness returned to him, then. Had she invaded his blood? Compelled him to come into the room to begin with? Without thinking, he stepped forward, finding his own dagger in his hand. "What have you done to me, blood mage?" His voice was far more composed than he thought possible, anger and fear clouding his mind.
"Commander," the elf corrected, her tone still tinged with agony and lust. She pulled herself up into a sitting position, her forearms resting lightly on her bent knees, the dagger still gripped lazily in the fingers of her right hand. Her eyes lost their focus for an instant, and Nathaniel was dumbstruck as the crimson in the bedsheets and on the steel pulled into the air once more, drawn back into the elf's core. "You should learn to knock."
A frantic laugh shattered his calm, another gasp taking him, even as his eyes flitted back to her shadowed sex for just a moment, to see it fully healed and whole. "I ask again, Commander," he breathed, forcing himself to meet her gaze. "What sorcery did you ply upon me?" Or should he merely think the question, to see if she did indeed inhabit his mind?
The Commander heaved a sigh, seemingly unmindful of the effects either her nakedness or her forbidden magics had upon the new recruit. "Look," she called, fixing him with a hard stare that quelled whatever lingering arousal the macabre display might have evoked within him. "You had to take tainted blood into you half a day ago, and I were there when you woke up. It were more than I got, at Ostagar." She said it as though he were a simpleton, or a child.
"I realize that," Nathaniel growled, flipping his dagger into an underhand position to mimic her grip on her own weapon. "But just now, at the end of your...display...I felt my skin crawling. Like my blood wanted to get out, into you."
The elf's eyes widened for a heartbeat, and then she grinned, looking half-mad for a moment. "Weren't your blood, Howe," she informed him, giving his name all the respect he'd granted her title. "It were mine, like I said." Another chill ran over him as he realized that she sounded pleasantly surprised at this.
Nathaniel forced himself to take a step back, lest he test the woman's reflexes. "What do you mean?"
"Do you really want to know?" When he nodded, she sighed, mumbling to herself. "You'll all have to learn sometime." After shaking her head, the Commander continued. "Normally, the Joining elixir is enriched with a drop of Archdemon blood," she explained. "Barring that, magically-concentrated darkspawn blood of sufficient potency can be used, but the principal is the same."
His tongue scraped over the roof of his mouth. "But my Joining wasn't normal, was it?"
Slowly, the Commander's head shook from side to side, a maddening smirk playing over her lips. "There ain't been an Archdemon around for a long time, and Thedas is a big place," she allowed. "I decided I'd let the rest of the Wardens have their share of Urthemiel's blood, and most of our share, too. You've got a few drops of my blood in you, Howe, instead of an Old God's."
Nathaniel's stomach churned, both at her words and the taunt of his name, the name that the Joining had taken from him by Grey Warden tradition. "So you've damned me for certain," he spat, looking away and into the fire. "Why not just kill me and be done?"
"Because I need you," the woman spat back. "The Joining's blood magic, aye. It were crafted in the shadow of the Tevinter Imperium before anyone had any notion of your Maker nor the woman you think married Him."
That was another blow, though he should have expected it. A glance told him that her gaze had not wavered from his face. "I might have guessed that you would deny the Maker, after what I witnessed." He swallowed and brought his eyes level with hers, once more. "What were you doing?"
The elf's gaze hardened again. "That's not your business," she cautioned him. "What were you doing?"
"I...don't know," the man admitted. "I think I snuck in here to try and kill you again," he said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. "But when I heard the moaning...I guessed you might be in the grips of a nightmare, so I thought to wake you."
"How considerate," the Commander replied, ice tinging her tone. After a moment, however, her countenance softened millimetrically. "Were your dreams so bad?"
Nathaniel blinked. "I...yes," he affirmed. "They're vague now, but I was terrified when I first woke."
The elf's lips twisted into a knowing smile. "You'll be able to ignore them, in time," she told him, and then barked a laugh at herself. "Used to be, there would come a time when they came back at you, stronger than ever...and that would drive you into the Deep Roads, and your death."
"What do you mean?"
She shrugged. "The Calling, we term it. You see, the darkspawn taint is in your blood, and eventually...it'll win. When that happens, you start turning into a ghoul, just like any civilian who's lived through the first stage of the corruption." The Commander shook her head. "In the old days, it would take thirty years, or thereabouts."
He arched a brow. "The...old days?"
The Commander shrugged. "Still that way, most everywhere else. Here, though, I've changed the Joining so that you've got closer to fifty years...which is more than you'll likely live anyhow." She glanced at a pair of chairs by the fire. "Do you want to sit down?"
Reeling from the overflow of information, Nathaniel nodded, moving to one of the armchairs. When he realized that the elf hadn't risen to follow, however, he turned the chair round to face her. "So I'll live to be a grey-haired Grey Warden," he observed.
"Maybe," the elf allowed. "Or you could die next week in the Deep Roads or the silver mines." Nathaniel tilted his head in an angled nod, conceding the point, and she went on. "You'll also not likely need to worry about any wenches coming by to claim you made their bellies big."
Nathaniel felt his mouth grow dry again. Not that he'd truly expected to have a family, not since his last name had become a curse to rival that of any taint in his blood, but he must've held out some hope of carrying on his legacy. Even the Drydens, pariahs that they'd become, had managed to hang on and carve out a place for themselves in the world. "Couldn't you have changed the Joining to keep that off, as well?"
The Commander paused for a long moment. "I might have," she agreed. "But I don't intend to. I've no wish to deal with more Felsis, if I can help it." His quizzical look must have amused her, for she smiled. "Oghren's wife, and the mother of his babe. Got before he Joined."
"Is there anything else I should know about, now that I'm at your disposal, Commander?" He tried to keep his tone even, but he couldn't help a tendril of resentment that seeped through.
"You'll want to eat about six times a day," she said. "And you'll learn to get by on five or six hours' sleep, even after you master your dreams. Thank you, by the way."
Nathaniel's lips parted at the all-too-authentic gratitude in the Commander's voice. "For what?"
The elf's lips curled into a frown. "I might well have been screaming in my sleep," she admitted. "I Joined during a Blight, so they're worse for me," she explained. "Had them near every night until the dragon died, and then for a month or so after...still get them about once a week."
"I'm...sorry," he allowed, and in that moment knew that it was true. And then his stomach growled loudly, punctuating her earlier warning about his appetite, which hadn't left him since he'd woken. He did his best to ignore the yawning chasm his belly seemed to have become. "In school, we learned that the Tevinter magisters offended the Maker by trying to usurp His place in heaven." He didn't know why he said it, but Nathaniel realized he didn't want to leave the elf's company quite yet.
She inclined her head. "Aye," she confirmed. "They touched the Golden City and turned it black, and in turn it corrupted them into the first darkspawn." She shook her head. "You wondering what I think about that story, or are you worrying that you're going against the Maker's plan?"
Nathaniel breathed a laugh. "Both, I think."
The Commander sighed and rolled her eyes. "Even here, there're folk who say we should've let the Archdemon's horde spread over the world, that the Maker wants to start anew. I don't believe it." She shook her head. "There ain't no Maker, Nathaniel. There ain't a plan for us."
The man's face tensed, a denunciation hot on his tongue, but something within him stilled it. Finally, he settled for a more neutral question. "How do you know that?"
The Commander shifted her dagger, bringing its gleaming point up to her lips. She considered him for a long moment. "Truly?" A deep breath took her, and he noticed the network of scars on her abdomen and thighs for the first time. Blinking again, Nathaniel brought his eyes to her face once more. "I don't," she continued, pensively. "But I do know that you don't know, either...and, while there are lots of arguments I could give you, the truth is that I don't like the idea of being a god's plaything."
"But..." His brow drew down as he considered his reply. "What's the point of the world, if it has no Maker, no plan? How did we get here?"
She actually laughed at him; he could tell, from the pity in her eyes. "Oh, Howe," she sighed. "Those two questions have little to do with each other," she pointed out. "As to the first, you sound like a bloody Qunari, bleating on about purpose. But for the second one, I tell you again that I don't know...and neither do you." His mouth opened again, but she held up her dagger-free hand, and went on. "This arling's full of farmers, traders. Warriors. Crafters. All trying to make it to tomorrow, just like everyone else in the world." Her eyes lost their focus again. "It's my task to see as many of them to the next sunrise as I can. If the Maker's plan is to have them all gutted by darkspawn, then He did a poor job putting me in charge of the Grey Wardens in this Blighted country." She shook her head. "Maleficar that I am, I don't need a Chantry priest to tell me life's worth defending, even for shiftless shemlens. And I'll fight all the damned darkspawn and templars the Maker wants to throw at me, if He does exist, and thinks his toys unworthy."
Nathaniel had no answer to the woman's tirade, aside from another rumble from his stomach. "I...don't know that I agree," he found himself saying. "At least about life being better with no plan to guide it," he clarified. "Mad thoughts after I woke up had me wondering if the Blight wasn't the Maker's just punishment...but I think such concerns are far above my consideration, honestly."
"I'll not stop you from going to the Chantry," the elf assured him. "I really don't care what stories any of my people take to. Just don't let your faith get in the way of your duty."
"You're...not what I expected," Nathaniel admitted.
Her dark brow quirked up at him. "Neither are you," she replied. "Now, kill me for a blood mage or leave me be," the Commander instructed him. A glint shone in her eyes as she lightly scraped her dagger down the inside of one thigh. "Unless you had another idea...?"
He sat fixed by that blood-coloured stare, his heart sinking beneath the shadows in her gaze. There was no promise of passion in her face; only a cool cruelty and a hunger he wasn't at all certain he wanted to satisfy. Swallowing with a bit of difficulty, Nathaniel shook his head. "I don't think so, Commander."
She nodded, something akin to relief tugging at her smile. "Good. See that you don't try to act on it, unless you really want to be damned." Very carefully, she lay her dagger upon the night table, but she did not settle back. "Get out," she dismissed him. "And do remember to knock, next time."